The second time around, the Stockton, Calif., native had a full
camp to prepare for McGregor, but he came up short in the UFC
202 headliner, falling via majority decision in a fight that
exceeded its considerable hype.

Diaz appeared to have the Irishman reeling on a couple occasions in
the bout, but ultimately McGregor was able to survive and improve
upon his prior performance. Still, the Cesar
Gracie protege thought he did enough to get the nod from the
cageside judges at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

“I thought I won the fight. I got paid, so it’s all good,” said
Diaz, who earned a disclosed $2 million in defeat. “He did a lot of
running in that fight. He ran the whole fight. I feel like they
should’ve took points for that. On top of me winning anyways, they
should’ve took points, which wouldn’t have let him win the
fight.”

While Diaz did have more time to train for McGregor, his UFC 202
camp was not without its difficulties. In fact, Diaz believes that
his opponent should have been able to finish him.

“I was injured coming into this fight. I’ve got the whole thing on
tape: I hurt my knee about a month ago. I wasn’t able to train
jiu-jitsu for the last month,” Diaz said. “And then about two weeks
after I was sparring boxing and I really hurt my rib. I got hit in
the body, by my partner, a really good boxer. That put me out of
sparring about two and a half weeks ago. I got it all on tape, just
to set if off and not to make excuses.

“He should have finished me off. If I would’ve been fighting me, I
would’ve taken me clean out. That’s my take on the whole
fight.”

Like McGregor, Diaz expects a trilogy to take place somewhere down
the road.

“I want number three. I gave him number two, so let’s do it,” he
said.